


Laura in the Dark

by counterheist



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Awkward, Gen, Petrarch, Prostitution, ah first love, kind of angst?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-03
Updated: 2010-10-03
Packaged: 2017-11-28 16:50:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/676667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/counterheist/pseuds/counterheist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His bosses expect him to let off steam like any other man (<i>he’s an <b>Italy</b></i>). But Italia Romano hates doing what’s expected of him and… and… and dammit!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Laura in the Dark

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a character from the book The Enchantress of Florence. Time period is c.1900. Ish.

If there is a lamp he tells her not to light it. She marvels that he can read that way, even in the dark, but he’s not really reading and if the ‘trick’ impresses her then that’s not his problem. He’s long since memorized the poems, just like he’s memorized his people’s songs and names, just like he’s memorized his grocery list at home. There is no difference to him. He doesn’t need lamplight to speak.

Their new state ( _he and Veneziano are a ‘they’ now, not ‘that one’ and ‘that other one’ and ‘no they’re both mine!’ and he still can’t believe how that happened_ ) is weaker than anything the ancients might have expected from the replacements of Rome, the conqueror, the magnificent, the stupid old man. Romano doesn’t care. They will become strong and that should be that will be that.

But what they will become and what they are have yet to be reconciled. Until that point, he’ll follow his boss’s orders, sort of, sometimes. He’ll go to the little unassuming houses in the little, unimportant villages, that make up, if not his heart, then his soul.

He should have brought himself something to drink.

It’s a warm night in Vittoria. They’ve sent him out again, slap on the back, have a good time, boy, my country, my boy. What he and his brother have now is so old and so new that no one really understands it. Least of all the humans, who treat him just like any other heavy-handed, arrogant youth. Like any other ‘active’ youth. They wink and smile when they send him off on nights like this, and he can’t stand it one bit.

He takes a small book out of his coat pocket, back to the girl sitting on the edge of the bed. Pretending to read, he traces the lines in his mind and recites.

_Blessed be the day, and the month, and the year,_   
_and the season, and the time, and the hour, and the moment,_   
_and the beautiful country, and the place where I was joined_   
_to the two beautiful eyes that have bound me;_

The girl, the whore, is yawning now. She conceals her boredom badly, and Romano has a life’s inheritance of secrecy he could teach her, but he won’t because she is one of his so she should know it anyway. When she grows up, perhaps, she will understand. Despite her profession she’s still so young. There’s still a spark in her eyes. It’s the wrong kind of spark for Romano’s tastes, even if she wasn’t one of his children. One of his citizens. Same thing.

Her name is Lucia, she is seventeen and Romano knows all of her hopes and dreams, better than her father ever would have, had he still been alive. That doesn’t mean he wants to sleep with her ( _he and his brother don’t use the word ‘children’ lightly_ ). That doesn’t mean that he’s never… he… the humans of other nations are… Romano has been around as long as anyone else. Even if it doesn’t seem like it, on paper.

In the same way he knows that Lucia loves a boy from the village who would love her in return if she had a little more money, Romano knows she thinks that he is handsome and dashing. That his recitations are more of a bother than fucking him would be. That Petrarch is old and dead and where they are is small, and comfortable, and pre-paid for by the government. Romano likes to think the money for these nights comes from Veneziano’s side of the bank accounts. It probably does, but Romano doesn’t have to worry about economics until the morning comes.

It’s not his fault they’ve sent him to Sicily.

_and blessed be the first sweet suffering_   
_that I felt in being conjoined with Love,_   
_and the bow, and the shafts with which I was pierced,_   
_and the wounds that run to the depths of my heart._

The other girls are jealous of Lucia, because they think that Vargas, that government man from the mainland, is going to take her away and even if that means she has to leave won’t she have so many new things and oh how jealous Nico will be he’ll get so mad! They think Vargas reads love poems to her because that’s what he feels for her. They also think he finishes the night by taking her into his arms and passionately et cetera, et cetera, he’s heard the same embellishments a million times over; he’s made the same boasts in the past.

Romano tells his brother he doesn’t know why he’s kept such a stupid name, fake as it is. But in the dark he hears a distant voice testing it out on her tongue, ‘ _Lo_ - _vi_ - _no_ … _Lovi? That’s a pretty good one. It’s cute! What do you think, Boss?_ ’ The voice fades away. Romano has crossed the answer out a thousand times in ink. Permanent.

_Blessed be all those verses I scattered_   
_calling out the name of my lady,_   
_and the sighs, and the tears, and the passion:_

Lucia is easing over to him, as quietly as she can. Which isn’t quiet enough; aside from Romano’s voice there is nothing in the room. No other sound. He hears her drape her arms around his middle before he feels it, and he flinches anyway. She giggles, and it’s almost the same, enough that he feels his face burning hot. He hears the echo of kindness. ‘ _I’m sorry for teasing!_ ’

“So who was she?”

Romano has followed every slow connection the girl behind him has made over the weeks. He doesn’t think of it as her taking too long to understand. Instead he’s proud that she figured it out on her own. “She?” That doesn’t mean he’ll hand her the rest of the story on a platter, it’s not something she deserves. It’s past her bedtime, past his too. Perhaps in an hour or two he can safely duck out of the cottage, sure to be ‘accidentally’ seen by at least one of the villagers. He can rest in his own lodgings.

“You aren’t talking about me with all that stuff,” she kisses his back and he assumes it would be a seductive gesture for someone, “so who are you talking about? Is she dead?”

She isn’t dead. She would never allow herself to die so easily. “Sit down.”

Lucia is stubborn, though, and who says nations can’t pass their traits along to their people ( _or is it the other way_ )? She begins to rub his shoulders and damn if it isn’t nice after so much traveling. “Is she really a man? Is that why they make you come to me?”

And he and Veneziano must have unified better than they thought, because Romano swears that is not _his_ curiosity purring out of her throat. Is that what she’s been thinking all this time, somewhere deep enough he couldn’t ( _refused to_ ) see? He isn’t like the rest of them, he doesn’t take his alliances to bed with him, only once or twice and that was only because he had to. His head is full of anger and regret, and maybe that’s what clouds his senses before he realizes she was talking about the poetry and the sleeping nights and how he looks like a boy barely twenty and he’s never touched her.

“She was a long time ago.” He carefully pulls her arms away, so much for never laying a hand on her, and leads her back to the bed. “And I told you to sit down.”

She sits, and he finishes the poem quickly. It’s not as haunting, she reflects. Romano, in a response she will never hear because the brand of telekinesis nations have doesn’t work both ways, agrees. It’s because his love isn’t named Laura, not even when she’s pretending, and even though he hasn’t spoken to her in decades, she’s still alive.

And he and Veneziano must have unified better than they thought, because this sentimentality that Romano feels is something not his own. Maybe he’ll name his memories Laura and be done with it. Maybe he’ll send himself on a diplomatic mission sometime soon. Maybe he won’t do anything at all, will stay in Sicily, will tuck his seventeen-year-old whore of a citizen-daughter into bed and be on his way.

_and blessed be all the sheets_   
_where I acquire fame, and my thoughts,_   
_that are only of her, that no one else has part of._

**Author's Note:**

> I got about a third through [TEoF](http://books.google.com/books?id=DNDlyLTSEtoC&dq=the+enchantress+of+florence&source=gbs_navlinks_s) before I had to return it to the library. So I don’t know how accurate Ago = Romano _really_ is ( _don’t spoil me!_ ). They’re not exactly the same, I already know that. But a lot of what Rushdie wrote when he was piecing Agostino together… screamed Romano ( _Hetalia, you’ve gotten to me_ ). Angrily. I might have gotten a tomato thrown at me. There’s too much that’s quotable, but here’s:
> 
> “Ago was an earnest boy, good-hearted beneath his pose of a foul-mouthed rapscallion.”
> 
> And
> 
> “‘There’s nothing those two sex maniacs can show me,’ Ago replied, ‘that I haven’t already seen, and that includes the pathetic little prunes in their pants.’”
> 
> Anyway, the scene this little thing was based on: In the book, Ago, like all good boys, finds himself at a brothel. And yet! He’s actually too shy to have sex with the girl. First he pretends to sleep until his friend is done in the room next door. Then he reads her poetry to kill time. Then she gets fed up and there is a threesome… I thought the concept was sweet, and so this came about! And perhaps I write too much about brothels. Hm.
> 
> The love poem is a [translation](http://petrarch.petersadlon.com/canzoniere.html?poem=61) of one of Petrarch’s sonnets ( _why this one, out of >300 to choose from? … ~~I picked at random and it seemed nice~~. I mean! It was a conscious artistic decision. Yeeeessss_ ). It is also the [inspiration for the title](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrarch#Laura_and_poetry). Here is the original:
> 
>  _Benedetto sia 'l giorno, et 'l mese, et l'anno,_  
>  et la stagione, e 'l tempo, et l'ora, e 'l punto,  
> e 'l bel paese, e 'l loco ov'io fui giunto  
> da'duo begli occhi che legato m'ànno;
> 
> et benedetto il primo dolce affanno  
> ch'i' ebbi ad esser con Amor congiunto,  
> et l'arco, et le saette ond'i' fui punto,  
> et le piaghe che 'nfin al cor mi vanno.
> 
> Benedette le voci tante ch'io  
> chiamando il nome de mia donna ò sparte,  
> e i sospiri, et le lagrime, e 'l desio;
> 
> et benedette sian tutte le carte  
> ov'io fama l'acquisto, e 'l pensier mio,  
> ch'è sol di lei, sí ch'altra non v'à parte.
> 
> Also: I’m beginning to find I like writing in the present tense. Never thought that would happen. My sentences get much more clause-y in the present tense.
> 
> EDIT: Take the time period to be more like 1880ish +/- 20 years. Which is where I figured the 1900 from ( _1880 was too many sig figs don't look at me like that I'm allowed to use that phrase_ )


End file.
